“I’m not going to be lectured by … right-wing nutjobs.”

Gibbs = Legend

Thank you Hopefruit

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Thanks UT

iowa …. chat away

Thanks ChristiMTL

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President Barack Obama prepares to sign legislation in the Oval Office, Jan. 3, 2012. Staff Secretary Rajesh De is pictured at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

‘a good week for the tea party’

the view from abroad

The Guardian: Vince Cable (UK Government Business Secretary) has launched an extraordinary attack on “rightwing nutters” in America who are trying to block the raising of the US government’s debt ceiling and who are, he said, a bigger threat to the world economy than problems in the eurozone.

… He said: “The irony of the situation at the moment, with markets opening tomorrow morning, is that the biggest threat to the world financial system comes from a few rightwing nutters in the American Congress rather than the eurozone.”

Negotiations on raising the US government’s debt limit above its current level of $14.3tn (£8.7tn) collapsed in acrimony late on Friday over details of a package of spending cuts and tax rises that would help to pay for such a move.

A visibly angry Barack Obama attacked the Republican speaker of the house, John Boehner, for refusing to return his phone calls and said he had been “left at the altar” in trying to reach an agreement. Most experts agree that if the US were to default on its debt payments, stock and bond markets worldwide would plunge, threatening a new great recession. The deadline for agreement is just over a week away, on 2 August……

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Thanks Titti

‘eight myths to chill an old-school republican soul’

St Louis Dispatch: When Sen. Jon Kyl and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor quit the (no longer) bipartisan deficit-reduction talks last week, it was not exactly a “Profiles in Courage” moment.

Serious deficit reduction can’t be – and shouldn’t be – accomplished without tax increases and broad elimination of tax expenditures, which would have the effect of raising taxes. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform last year acknowledged that … But tax increases, in whatever guise, fail the current Republican purity laws…

It’s sad to see what has happened to the Party of Lincoln … Today we have the spectacle of smart, patriotic men and women putting their brains and integrity on ice to please a party dominated by anti-intellectual social Darwinists and the plutocrats who finance and mislead them……

Read full column here

Thank you PoliticalJunkessa

ah, those koch brothers’ puppets….

Steve Benen: The Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity sponsored this year’s RightOnline conference in Minneapolis, and organizers and attendees were certainly on message … Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, continues to insist that President Obama “systematically” wants “higher prices on gasoline.”

…The talking points have been hammered home enough so that far-right activists can bark them like trained seals.

There are, however, two main problems with this. First, the notion that the Obama administration would want higher gas prices on purpose is deeply foolish … if voters don’t want to pay more at the pump, and the president doesn’t want to make voters angry in advance of his re-election bid, why would he deliberately pursue this?

Second, Tim Phillips appears to have a bit of a credibility problem – Americans for Prosperity just so happens to be financed by oil industry money. In other words, energy companies are financing a right-wing outfit to blame Obama for gas prices.

Full post here

ah, the left’s equivalent of birthers (video added)

GOPolitico: President Obama was interrupted at a California fundraiser on Thursday by a group of singing protesters who demanded the release of Bradley Manning, the private charged with giving information to WikiLeaks.

Obama “could not ignore” the singers because the setting was small — about 200 people, according to the pool. The protesters in the back of the room sang: “Each of us brought you $5,000. … I paid my dues, where’s our change? We’ll vote for you in 2012, yes that’s true. Look at the Republicans; what else can we do?”

White House aides tried to get them to stop, then escorted out the woman who had led the group, the pool said.

For his part, Obama tried to make light of it, but he didn’t address Manning’s detention or treatment. “That was a nice song, much better voiced than I,” he said, the pool reported.

“Where was I?” Obama said. “That didn’t break my flow.”

More at the Washington Post

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Source

“He thought it was kind of funny,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney. On Air Force One heading to Nevada, Carney said Obama came out of the fundraiser and remarked, “You don’t get that every day.”

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It’s funny, these people are always happy to quote PJ Crowley on Manning … except they always leave this bit out (from the Guardian): To be clear, Private Manning is rightly facing prosecution and, if convicted, should spend a long, long time in prison. Having been deeply engaged in the WikiLeaks issue for many months, I know that the 251,000 diplomatic cables included properly classified information directly connected to our national interest. The release placed the lives of activists around the world at risk.

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Yep, Manning and WikiLeaks sure are heroes:

The Guardian (January 2011): …with the recent release of sensitive diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks may have committed its own collateral murder, upending the precarious balance of power in a fragile African state and signing the death warrant of its pro-western premier…

…in the wake of the WikiLeaks’ release, one of the men targeted by US and EU travel and asset freezes, Mugabe’s appointed attorney general, has launched a probe to investigate Tsvangirai’s involvement in sustained western sanctions. If found guilty, Tsvangirai will face the death penalty.

And so, where Mugabe’s strong-arming, torture and assassination attempts have failed to eliminate the leading figure of Zimbabwe’s democratic opposition, WikiLeaks may yet succeed. Twenty years of sacrifice and suffering by Tsvangirai all for naught, as WikiLeaks risks “collateral murder” in the name of transparency.

Before more political carnage is wrought and more blood spilled – in Africa and elsewhere, with special concern for those US-sympathising Afghans fingered in its last war document dump – WikiLeaks ought to leave international relations to those who understand it – at least to those who understand the value of a life.

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The Australian (July 2010): The founder of WikiLeaks was forced last night to defend his decision to publish tens of thousands of uncensored intelligence documents.

The Times revealed that the names, villages, relatives’ names and even precise GPS locations of Afghans co-operating with Nato forces could be accessed easily from files released by WikiLeaks.

Human rights groups criticised the internet site and one US politician said that the security breaches amounted to a ready-made Taliban hitlist.

Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblowing website, told The Times that he would “deeply regret” any harm caused by the disclosures.

But in an extensive interview he defended his actions …. “No one has been harmed, but should anyone come to harm of course that would be a matter of deep regret…..”

More here

‘the new republican landscape’

NYT Editorial: Six months after voters sent Republicans in large numbers to Congress and many statehouses, it is possible to see the full landscape of destruction that their policies would cause – much of which has already begun. If it was not clear before, it is obvious now that the party is fully engaged in a project to dismantle the foundations of the New Deal and the Great Society, and to liberate business and the rich from the inconveniences of oversight and taxes.

At first it seemed that only a few freshmen and noisy followers of the Tea Party would support the new extremism. But on Friday, nearly unanimous House Republicans showed just how far their mainstream has been dragged to the right. They approved on strict party lines the most regressive social legislation in many decades, embodied in a blueprint by the budget chairman, Paul Ryan. The vote, from which only four Republicans (and all Democrats) dissented, would have been unimaginable just eight years ago to a Republican Party that added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

Mr. Ryan called the vote “our generation’s defining moment,” and indeed, nothing could more clearly define the choice that will face voters next year.

His bill would end the guarantee provided by Medicare and Medicaid to the elderly and the poor … People now under 55 would be required to pay at least $6,400 more for health care when they qualified for Medicare … Fully two-thirds of his $4.3 trillion in budget cuts would come from low-income programs…..

Full editorial here

you know, the nutjobs are getting nuttier

teabaggers escalate war on spelling

Visit ‘Morons With Signs‘ – it’s stupendous!

“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”

(John Stuart Mill)

Meantime, a banner for which ‘WTF’ was quite possibly invented: